Apr/070
Last Days
It’s the last days of everything at the moment. Tonight is Le Delice’s closing party. Katy and Fred are taking a well earned break and buggering off for a couple of months. There’s a BBQ tonight and I daresay most of the Les Houches Royalty who haven’t left already will be there. Imagine if your local pub closed twice a year for a couple of months! Weird eh?
And tomorrow it’s the end of season party on the Grande Montets. Martin was up there yesterday and saw them building the paddling pool which people ski into. The main party is in the bar right at the top. It’s about 3000m up there – partying at altitude. I think I’ll stick to my plan of not taking my skis up, cos I can just see myself trying to ski down the glacial front face all smashed up and breaking something.
Apr/070
A touch of rain to right things
It’s been hot and sunny for a couple weeks now. I’m not complaining of course – I love the sun, but after a while your head does get a little frazzled by it. Yesterday I woke up in a stinkingly bad mood. I looked out the window and was actually disappointed to see it was another bluebird. I wanted cloud and rain.
My mood got steadily worse throughout the day until mid afternoon when suddenly it did cloud over and start to piss down. It was like a weight had lifted. There were heavy showers all evening and the smell was amazing. It smelled like summer and reminded me of the fantastic thunder storms you get here in the Alps. It seems that we’ve had our 2 weeks of spring and summer has begun.
Apr/070
Congratulations
Congratulations again to Simon and Kate Little who have successfully manufactured baby Beatrice. A beautiful baby girl whom Simon assures me is already the love of his life (aside from Kate of course)!
Apr/070
Big weekend
So obviously after the heliskiing the stag do carried on drinking late into the night. Much partying. Then Saturday night was La La Land at the patinoire. It’s one of very few club nights that get put on in Chamonix, and end of season party where everyone you’ve ever met can be found. So that was another late night.
Sunday dawned, but I didn’t see it. By the time Sarah and I woke up it was the afternoon. The weather’s still amazing – hot and summery; so we drove down to the lake in Passy to swim and hang about in the sun. The water’s still bloody cold even with a wetsuit on, but it’s good to swim.
So this morning is the day of the first full week of work with no skiing. It’s a little sad to have put away all my ski clothes but the upside is that over the winter I’ve always struggled with finding a good balance between work and skiing. Any day I haven’t been up on the mountain I’ve felt a bit guilty that I’m not making the most of the opportunities here. Now I’ve made the decision to finish skiing I don’t need to feel that anymore.
So to kick myself into summer mode I borrowed Sarah’s mountain bike this morning and cycled into the office from Les Houches. It’s about 5km on a beautiful track which goes through the forest on the North side of the valley. I’m planning to cycle into the office this summer, so today was a bit of a practice. It only took about 30 mins. Now I need to get myself a bike. More kit. Does it ever end?
Apr/070
Advertising in RSS Feeds
As publishers have moved towards monetizing RSS feeds, their have been vibrant discussions as to whether advertisements in feeds are viable or whether they will drive subscribers away. At the end of the day while it appears that many are discussing the philosophical approaches to ads in RSS feeds few are taking the time to examine the options available for inserting advertisements in feeds. Ultimately the advertisements served are going to determine the success of RSS as an advertising medium. The ads served must be related to the content contained in the feed. If the RSS feed contains quality content, the ads are relevant, and the volume of ads is in balance with the volume of content served, advertising in RSS feeds will succeed. Take a closer look at some of the ad serving options currently available for RSS feeds. Review of Current OptionsGoogle AdSense for Feeds Google's AdSense for Feeds offers contextually targeted advertisements, with a wide selection of advertisers. Google chooses not to divulge the percentage of revenue that is shared with the publisher, so it is difficult if not impossible to predict monthly revenue. The current Google AdSense system for feeds is tied to blogs and does not appear to be overly flexible. http://www.google.com/adsense
Pheedo Pheedo displays categorized advertisements rather than contextual advertisements. The upside to this is that Pheedo's advertisements can be used in conjunction with Google AdSense or AdSense for feeds without violating Google's contract. Pheedo works with the publisher to serve advertisements from similar or related categories associated with the feeds contents.
Pheedo's system allows for advanced ad filtering, giving publishers control over keyword ad filtering, specific ad filtering or url filtering. Pheedo's system also allows publishers to sell ads to existing advertisers whom they already have a relationship. The revenue split is 50% and feeds can be a sponsored flat rate advertisement or a pay-per-click advertisement, where the publisher is only paid if the advertisement is clicked. http://www.pheedo.com
Kanoodle for Feeds Kanoodles systems for providing advertisements for feeds is similar to Google's but they do not have the breadth of advertisers that Google boasts. Advertisements are served based on topics, not to keywords. Kanoodle shares 50% of the revenue generated from the advertisements with the publisher serving the ad. http://www.kanoodle.com Evaluating Options When evaluating feed ad serving solutions consider the following:
1. Ad Relevance In order to generate revenue from RSS advertisements or for an advertising campaign to succeed using RSS as a channel. It is absolutely critical that the advertisements served in the feed contain related content, the more related the content the higher the likelihood that the advertisements will be of interest to the reader and clicked. Also the closer the content relates to the feeds theme the higher the likelihood the reader will have genuine interest in the product or service being advertised.
2. Ad Ratio Publishers need to retain control over the frequency of advertisements. Readers will become frustrated with feeds that are heavily laden with advertisements and genuine content. The advertiser is happy as they are reaching a targeted audience the publisher is happy because their advertisement is being clicked and generating revenue.
3. Clearly Denoted as Ads The debate over editorial control and advertisements rage on. It is generally considered proper net etiquette for publishers to clearly mark advertisements to distinguish them from editorial web content. When selecting a RSS advertising partner consider the context in which the advertisements are displayed. Does it blend with the feed or site, while still being clearly marked sponsored material? Or does the content blend so well that it appear as a product or service endorsement from the publisher? Credibility and reputation online matter, and the segregation of advertisements and ensuring they are properly denoted as such will go a long way to enhance credibility with readers.
Clearly as RSS increases in popularity publishers are looking for ways to monetize their content. RSS in advertising is a logical step, and striking a balance between quality, consistent content and occasional related advertisements will lead to the success of advertising in RSS feeds. If the balance is not found, publishers may be forced to move to a subscription RSS feed model.
Apr/071
Meeting Charlie Adam
I was in Geneva for dinner last night. It was a friend’s birthday and well…. Sumink different innit? So this guy Charlie Adam turned up with his wife and brought Fred a framed print for his birthday. I immediately recognised it as the work of an artist I’ve seem all over Chamonix since I arrived. I had no idea that it was done by a contemporary local artist – I assumed it to be some famous 60’s pop-artist I’d never heard of.
Solarim, by Charlie Adam
www.bungalowgraphics.com
And here he was in the flesh. I was a little bit star-struck to be honest. But the question I really wanted to ask was…. Are the images created in paint? Amazingly not. Charlie creates all his art in Illustrator. Thing is, when I first started developing my Les Houches Royalty cartoon idea, what I had in mind for the graphical style were his images. Turns out he’s been thinking about animation for a while now, and wondering how to move towards flash and bringing movement to his art.
The Les Houches Royalty cartoon idea lives. Sweet.
Apr/071
Hot
It’s hot here in the valley. The weather’s lovely all over Europe of course , but here it’s in the 20’s during the day. Shorts and t-shirt weather. It’s weird to see people still carrying skis around town. The Grande Montets is still open and people are still skiing, but I’ve pretty much finished my skiing for this season. I am doing one more lap of the Vallee Blanche with the Trainee Instructors I met in Morzine a few weeks ago, and going heliskiing in Italy on Friday for another mate’s stag do, but after that I’m going take my skis out of the car and prop them up against the office wall till December.
I’ve already started doing other things. Sarah and I went hiking in Les Houches on Saturday, walking up towards the pistes we skied on a few months ago which are now bare gravelly slopes. Then on Sunday we went cycling. I borrowed a bike from a mate and we cycled down to Passy on the valley floor – about 15km, mostly downhill, and then taking the train back up to Les Houches. We stopped at the lake and even that looks quite swimable with a shorty wetsuit.
I’m thinking forward to the summer now. I’ve haven’t been as fit and healthy since I was 14 years old, and I want to build on that. It’s time to stop smoking, stop getting drunk all the time and really make the most of this amazing place I live. I’m going to buy my own bike and cycle the 5km to and from the office every day from Les Houches, get back into rock climbing and start to get much more into walking and mountaineering.
Apr/070
Errr, surely that can’t just have happened?
So yesterday I spent a few hours opening all my mail from the past few months which has been piling up on my desk. There were quite a few from the Inland Revenue about my Self Assessment Tax situation. Those HM Revenue & customs letterheads with the blue lines always scare the bejesus out me and I freak out and don’t read them properly. A lot of the letters were vaguely threatening about missing the return date and stuff but one caught my eye. It seemed to suggest that between 2000 & 2005 I’d overpaid about £2500 in tax. I spoke to Sarah about it this morning and vaguely suggested that I might try to get it back. She said to call them – it’s easy & they just send you a check straight away.
Yeh right I thought. But I needed to call them and change my address anyway so while I was on the phone I tentatively brought it up. And sure enough the geezer said there would be a check in the post to my French address in the next few days. No way. That’s about EUR 3.5K! I think I’ll use some of that to take Sarah on holiday to in the summer once everything calms down a bit.
Apr/070
Mental patient shoes
It's getting summery here during the days and whilst looking for my summer flip flops I realised they're in storage up on the farm. So. I upgraded my summer footwear to a pair of Crocs. Gotta love crocs, although they are known around these parts as mental patient shoes, they're bloody comfortable, light, fun, cheap and orthopaedic mental patient shoes. Sarah and Katy wear 'em in the kitchen to work in and swear by them.
Then I got a bit carried away and bought some jibbitz to stick on them.
I will be the envy of all 6 year old kids with a pair of chocolate crocs with a gecko stuck on 'em. And the laughing stock of the rest of the population.
Apr/070
Needed an holiday
I suddenly realised on Thursday afternoon that over the Easter weekend all my clients etc would be taking 4 days off from Friday till Tuesday and suddenly realised that I wanted to too.
I didn’t realise how much I needed it. Thursday I got pished in the Delice with mates and managed not to fall off my bar stool this time. A good start. Good Friday we had a picnic up the mountain. 5 of us went skiing with a rucksack full of beer and sandwiches, found a nice rock in the sun to watch the skiers go by. The wideboy-jibbing snowboarders we were with built a kicker to launch over our rock – a good 8 foot gap. No one got hurt or anything! Sh-weet!
So with a face-tan to really be jealous of and a few days left of holiday, I spend the next couple of days chilling in the office’s garden enjoying the sunshine and 20degree heat, reading, eating, sleeping and generally getting my head back on straight.
Tuesday morning now, and the office is clean and tidy, the washing up done and the huge piles of unopened mail dealt with, ready to take on the world again. The freelance work is coming in thick and fast at the moment after a few month’s marking drive, and I’m making hay while the sun shines.
Also this morning I’m organisation a mountain guide to take a group down the Valleé Blanche on the 20th April. The people I skied with in Morzine on the instructor course all reckon it would be a great way to end the season and I agree. That and my mate Mark’s heliskiing trip for his stag do and maybe one more ski tour should round off the ski season nicely.